Trey Parker

The Academy Awards offer a huge, guaranteed audience of both industry and civilian fans. That makes it a unique opportunity for stars and non-stars alike to act out with the assurance that someone, somewhere will be paying attention to them.

Sixteen years of doing everything at the last minute finally caught up with the South Park guys this week.

To stay current, Trey Parker and Matt Stone famously wait until six days before each new show to begin working on it. But that tight deadline turned into an impossible one this week, as work ground to a halt during a three-hour power outage Tuesday at South Park Studios in Los Angeles.

For the first time since it premiered in 1997, the show missed its deadline and was forced to air a rerun Wednesday night.

Broadway got religious Sunday night – make that sacrilegious – with the wildly irreverent The Book of Mormon dominating the 65th annual Tony Awards, as expected.

"This is such a waste of time," said Chris Rock as he was about to open the envelope, "like taking a hooker to dinner."

Lampooning young Latter Day Saints on a mission to Uganda, the musical, with a book and score by South Park's Trey Parker and Matt Stone and Avenue Q's Robert Lopez, went into the evening with 14 nominations and walked away with nine Antoinette Perry Awards, including best musical, score, book, featured actress Nikki M. James, among others.

Parker, who co-directed Mormon with Casey Nicholaw, thanked South Park fans when the two were named best directors of a musical. "If it weren't for you guys," said Parker, "we wouldn't be here."

When South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker decided to try their hand at writing a Broadway show, The Book of Mormon, there were some inherent concerns about how the irreverent duo's talents would translate to the sophisticated New York theater crowd.

"That was the big question: are the grey hairs gonna come and are the South Park people going to come to something they can't afford?" says Stone. "But I've seen some really old people in their laughing their asses off!"

Have they ever: since opening in March, The Book of Mormon has grossed more than $10 million in ticket sales, and has been nominated for 14 Tonys – the most of any show this year – including individual nominations for stars Andrew Rannells, Josh Gad, Nikki M. James and Rory O'Malley.

"It's been a ride and a half," says Gad. "All of us are so thrilled that the world is embracing it as furiously as they are."